Walkinshaw Endures Frustrating Silverstone Finale

Sean Walkinshaw rounded off his 2012 Protyre Formula Renault BARC season with a top twelve finish during the final race of an incident-packed weekend at Silverstone.

A mixed qualifying saw the 18 year old take thirteenth and eighth places on the grid for the two encounters, with the first of the races not going to plan. Shuffled down to fifteenth early on, Walkinshaw’s race was over on lap four when contact from another car wrecked the front wing of his MTECH Lite machine.

Race two saw Walkinshaw shuffled back to tenth early on before the emergence of the safety car. Unable to capitalise on the re-start, the Oxfordshire teenager got attacked from behind, eventually finishing twelfth.

“We were hindered by the red flag in the first qualifying so we didn’t have very much time to get anything better than P13 for the first race”, explained Sean, “The second session wasn’t too bad though, I was reasonably happy with eighth on the grid for race two although without a small mistake I could have been a couple of places higher as I lost a tenth.

“Both races were quite frustrating really, in the first another driver just swung across and destroyed my front wing with his rear wheel. In the second one, I got a really bad re-start after the first Safety Car which meant I was passed into Copse and then someone else tried a fun-lunge as well, it was a bit dangerous, and I had to run wide and get on the brakes so lost a lot of time.

“After that the pace was alright but we lost too much ground, then we had another Safety Car so the race was pretty frustrating overall. We should have had more out of the weekend.”

Next up for Walkinshaw is the Protyre Formula Renault BARC Winter Series, which kicks off in two weeks’ time in support of the BTCC at Brands Hatch. Walkinshaw will once again run with MTECH Lite and is looking forward to the four-race series.

“I’m really looking forward to the Winter Series, it should be good and I think we can go into it with a lot of confidence after my recent results”, he added. “We always wanted to stay with MTECH, it’s a great team and we all work really well together. We’ve definitely made good steps forward during the second half of the BARC season.”